Workforce

A paycheck looks like one number, and underneath it is a calculation and a set of promises. Hours, rates and elections become gross pay; gross pay becomes federal, state and local taxes, benefit deductions and garnishments, each with its own taxable wage base; and what's left moves to the employee's bank on a date the law fixes, while every amount withheld becomes a liability owed to an agency, a carrier, a plan or a court on its own deadline. A payroll provider, a PEO, an employer of record and an embedded payroll API are all keeping those promises for someone else's employees, out of money they collected first. This book surveys how the industry does each piece, benchmarked across ADP, Paychex, Paycom, Paylocity, Dayforce, Workday, Gusto, Rippling, Deel, TriNet, Check and the others, with no single company as the model, and how you'd build it, extending one core data model chapter by chapter.

It reads in ten parts, plus a glossary: the business (providers, revenue, agents and PEOs), gross to net (withholding, deductions, tips and corrections), payroll tax at every level, moving the money (funding, client funds, direct deposit, child support and garnishments), time and wage-hour law, hiring and HR records, leave, benefits administration, contractors and global payroll, and running the platform (embedded payroll, unified APIs, architecture, controls and fraud).